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The Runner’s Rite of Spring ®

Capsule Histories of all 46 Editions of the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run

1973-2018 nolias, forsythia and cherry blossoms bloom along the roads
or runners in Washington since 1973, the true beginning and paths bordering the Potomac River.
Fof spring is marked not by a date on the calendar but by Williams and Reynolds settled on the ten-mile distance. “If
the running of the Cherry Blossom Ten-Mile.
it was longer, you’d be too pooped out for Boston,” Williams
Elite competitors have used the race as a final competitive once recalled. “We didn’t want it too short, though. The idea
tuneup for the Boston Marathon two weeks later. Bill Rodgers, was to have an attractive alternative to a marathon.” Fami-
Greg Meyer, and Lisa Larsen Weidenbach all went on to win lies could come to Washington as tourists. Dad or Mom
Boston after their victories here. could run the ten-miler, and the rest of the family could
enter the two-mile fun run and collect commemorative
For lesser mortals, the Cherry Blossom means a chance to patches as well.
doff the warmup suits, turtlenecks, caps and gloves of winter
and join other runners in a celebration of the season. Here in A local insurance company, Acacia Mutual Life, was per-
Washington, the race has become as fixed a rite of spring as suaded to serve as a sponsor, and entrants were recruited
the Easter Egg Roll at the White House or the lighting of the through the DC Road Runners Club and through pink fly-
Japanese lanterns on the Tidal Basin. ers distributed at the YMCA.
Winners of that inaugural race, held in muggy weather,
1973 (April 1) were Sam Bair of Pennsylvania in 51:22 and Kathy Switzer
Who would have believed, in 1973, that a family-style gath- of New York City in 71:19. The organizers congratulated
ering of fewer than 200 runners would become an event so themselves on attracting over 100 runners to the ten-miler -
popular that it is necessary to hold a lottery to keep people a big field in those days.
away?
The Cherry Blossom Invitational Run, as it was christened, 1974 (March 31)
was the brainchild of Gar Williams, then president of the The following year, 1974, the race came into its own. At
DC Road Runners Club, and Ralph Reynolds, program the suggestion of DCRRC official Dave Theall, the race was
director of Washington’s Central YMCA. The two men renamed the “Cherry Blossom Classic,” and the entry fee
conceived of a race to coincide with the Cherry Blossom was dropped for the ten-miler, a tradition that would hold
Festival, a high point of the city’s tourist season, when mag- up for twenty years. Nearly 400 runners showed up to run
on a raw, cloudy day. Jack Mahurin, then a graduate stu-
dent at the University of Maryland, lowered the men’s event
record to 50:50, and Carol Fridley, of Pennsylvania, won the
women’s in 62:41.
1975 (April 6)
The field doubled again in 1975 - some 575 finishers in the
ten-miler, and 275 in the fun run - for a race held in bril-
liant sunshine but Arctic temperatures. Carl Hatfield of
West Virginia battled frigid winds gusting up to 30 mph to
win the race in 51:47. Julie Shea, a then-unknown North
Carolina schoolgirl, took the women’s crown in 59:55, the
first in a series of three consecutive victories.

1976 (April 4)
It was Hatfield and Shea again in 1976 as the field for the
ten-miler topped 1,500. Hatfield lowered the men’s event
record to 49:09, while Shea set a U.S. women’s record for the
ten miles at 57:04.

1977 (April 3)
By 1977 the running boom was starting to crest, and race
organizers instituted an entry cutoff for the first time as the
number of applicants swelled above 2,000. The field was

52 2019 Credit Union Cherry Blossom Media Guide